


The Question

by pteroredactyl



Category: Fallout (Video Games)
Genre: Eventual Romance, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Uncertain Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 09:50:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6799054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pteroredactyl/pseuds/pteroredactyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meg and MacCready are a dream team, heading back to Sanctuary from a successful mission. But, with the promise of a new arrival, will Meg still be his number one girl?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Question

The first glimpse of home through the trees was something that Meg now lived for. Her house had always been her pride and joy – newly built and still paint-fragranced when Shaun was born. She had always had a knack for dressing a room and the neighbours often commented, smiling, on what she had done with the place. When they had finally decided to buy Codsworth it had meant they had a keeper for their neat little garden with rose bushes and her beloved sunflowers, and she could still remember the bittersweet fantasies she once had about photographing her little boy beside them: the flowers seeming to diminish a little every year as he grew taller.  
Now the flowers, and her baby, had gone. Taken by the Wasteland.  
At first she had gone kicking and screaming into that very place, determined beyond reason to restore her past life to its once idyllic prime. However, that determination had guttered and finally snuffed out completely upon her discovery of The Institute and the identity of Father. Regardless, she had still mustered the wherewithal to destroy their hive and rescued her facsimile boy. The fierce mother therefore had her reunion of sorts: back in her home with a fake son and a junked up vision of what life once was. The wallpaper still peeped through the grime; periwinkle blue, like her son’s eyes. The doormat still lay out to welcome her friends to her home for coffee, homemade snacks, and a catch-up. There were still barbecues in the back yard and neighbours and little nodding flowers beneath her window. They were different, all of them, but they had come to be home in every way as much as the polished, shiny reality of her pre-war life.  
‘What you thinkin Boss?’  
She was shaken from her reverie by the sniper. He had a rather peculiar knack for it. He was walking by her side, a little closer than necessary, but in a reassuring rather than tasteless way. She hoisted her pack and huffed a little at the effort.  
‘Not sure. I suppose I was just thinking how good it’ll be to get home again.’ It had been a long run since their last night in her house and as she spoke she felt the truth of her words reassure her. He smiled his lopsided grin and pushed his hat off his eyes.  
‘Can’t argue with that. Been a week since we washed in anything other than the river. I need to get these rads off me.’ It was Meg’s turn to smile. Ever since Sturges had got the old decontamination shower she’d found in Med-Tek research working, Mac had been obsessed with maintaining a rad-free existence. His sudden insistence on cleanliness had caused her some confusion at first – when they’d first met, he seemed to use a thick, natural layer of grime as an extra layer of clothing and he certainly had a unique effect on the olfactory system – but now she could see that wanting to be clean was something that people who care about themselves feel. Mac had finally found a stability and with it, a desire to look after himself. It was something she referred to in her head as the Sanctuary effect. Of all the settlements she had seen in the Commonwealth, Sanctuary seemed the most… comfortable. Sure, there were settlements with better defensive positions (no one could argue that a giant airship eighty feet from the ground was a great choice for avoiding ferals) and some with more fertile land, but the people in Sanctuary seemed to show such absolute devotion to their little town that it was beyond compare in her mind. Only Covenant had seemed equal to her home, and a corner of her was secretly delighted when it was revealed as a sham. Plus, junking the place had been all the more cathartic for it. And it gave her an idea.  
‘Mac, when we get back… we should have a party.’ She said. He snorted in response. She had expected him to. ‘No, I’m serious! Think about it: we’ve got all this stuff from Covenant: why don’t we use some of it?’ She stopped as she spoke and gestured to the brahmin that was tottering up the hill behind them, laden with the spoils of the hamlet they had recently torn apart. ‘We could all do with something fun, Mac - especially us… after everything we had to do to get this stuff.’  
She watched as his eyes dropped and then felt the shared weight of recent events settle heavily between them. They had agreed not to talk about it and she wondered if she had inadvertently poked at the wound. He raised his chin and looked at her keenly before the grin made reappearance. She liked the grin. It spoke of comradeship… and possibly a party.  
‘Can I dress Strong up and play pin the tail on the Super Mutant?’ He said.  
‘Only if you want to be served on a platter next to the punch, sniper.’ She replied.  
‘Fair point.’ A pause. ‘Punch?’ She could tell from his suddenly raised eyebrow that punch was not something served at even the best Commonwealth parties.  
‘It’s a drink, Mac. Fruit, booze.’ She caught his hopeful expression. ‘Heavy on the booze.’  
It was as though she had flicked a switch and he gave an impressed nod.  
‘That sounds more like it.’  
‘Oh! And we’ve got Deezer now, too!’ She motioned again to the Brahmin and its load. They had temporarily deactivated Covenant’s least creepy resident – a Mr Handy called Deezer – and strapped him atop the mountain of junk on the creature’s back. ‘He was always going on about his lemonade!’ Her eyes were wide and MacCready snorted again. It was a habit, she thought – sort of endearing, but without being actually attractive. The thought made her blush softly. The thought of finding her best friend attractive was something she recognised but liked to keep buried very, very, deep.  
‘I tried some,’ he said, oblivious to her agonising, ‘it was great, but kinda worrying that he said it was made from fruit: I sure as hell never saw a lemon or whatever it’s called.’  
She chuckled at his disgust.  
‘It’s made from some old pre-war stash of lemonade powder, I think. Nothing weird to worry about.’  
‘Sure. Whatever you say.’  
‘Trust me. I’m the party doctor,’ she replied, and set off again.  
He caught up to her in few steps, although she sensed a hitch in his breathing. It had been a stupid idea to share to load so equally between two humans and one mutated cow, especially when for another couple of hundred caps they could have had two of the damn things. Another one of MacCready’s amazing caps-saving plans that had ended up with them both suffering a disproportionate amount of discomfort. Now she was bent almost double beneath a giant rucksack filled with cans of food, three weapons duffels, a fat man and a bolt of fabric for Anne at the store. Whilst manageable, the load was still roughly seventeen times what she would be ordinarily happy with. There had been bickering about the fat man, too. Meg hated the things: as if they didn’t have enough to deal with without hoisting a bag full of nuclear bombs around with them. She could never rest easy next to a fire, burying the contentious payload whenever they stopped for rest. MacCready, however, could not articulate his delight whenever they found one – they were worth serious caps.  
Meg had found his obsession with money disturbing in the extreme when she first met him. After all, his role in her life was to be nothing more than to be a mercenary and the idea that she had hired a man to basically act as an indiscriminate murderer on her behalf was a fairly alien and uncomfortable concept. However, as the walls between them had gradually begun to dissemble and the truths about The Capitol, and Duncan and Lucy, and Little Lamplight had spilled forth, she realised that his scrounging and penny-pinching were simply the actions of a desperately lonely man trying to make life tolerable for the only good thing he had left. As he spoke about his son, in hushed tones at first and later with laughter and open sentimentality, she could see her own acute desire for her child reflected back at her in his expressions. Although neither would ever admit it, it was the glue that held them together and whenever people talked (and they certainly did talk) about the tight bond the two shared it was this that they were referring to –without ever even knowing a thing about it.  
The affection had come after this, of course. As the weeks went on and their missions became about his needs as much as hers, they found themselves experiencing a transition from awkward business arrangement to a genuine comfort and ease in one another’s presence. It seemed ridiculous to her now that she had actually given him money: that she was his employer. He’d tried to pay her back after she helped him take care of the Gunners, but knowing now where those caps were going, she was glad that she had refused his offer hands down. Now, it was as though their paths had moved from parallels into a dedicated convergence. Duncan was safe, Shaun was as much returned to her as he would ever be, and simple survival was the name of the game. Actually, that wasn’t true. Survival had given into to the day to day task of existence – the idea that she would be planning a party would have been laughable to her as she first entered her old home town after stumbling down the hill from the Vault. She had howled that day, kneeling on the broken asphalt beneath Codsworth, unable to comprehend the idea that her entire life was reduced to rubble and a slightly out of sorts Mr Handy. Thank God she had found him, though. He had been her rock in those early days.  
Now she had a community, friends, and an altogether more amiable purpose. Even carrying the load she was, she felt lighter than she had in a long time.  
It was at that moment that she first spotted Sanctuary through the trees and her heart was glad.

****************************

Preston was manning the gatepost as they approached over the wooden bridge. Even from a distance, Meg could see a moment of confusion cross his face and a move towards his laser musket, and then she remembered that they must have looked unrecognisable under the vast quantities of junk they bore. She lifted an arm in greeting, taking care not to let the bag with the nuclear weapons slide too rapidly past her elbow.  
‘Hey!’ she cried, ‘it’s us! We brought crap!’ A smile broke across the Minuteman’s face and he descended from his wooden platform. In a moment he was dashing up to them, arms outstretched to take whatever he could. MacCready fussed as Preston relieved Meg first, complaining about clear favouritism and a class war where he, the lowly merc, would have to wait until the General was dealt with. Meg reminded him that he was an asshole and grabbed a sack of broken vases that he was in danger of losing from the rig on his back. His face was not angry, however, and she playfully jabbed him as she did so.  
Sturges was next to appear, informing her that Nick had taken Shaun with him to Diamond City and beaming at the vast quantities of new playthings they had brought. Meg turned him around before he could start poking at the tentatively-placed brahmin load. She knew from experience that all it could take was one shiny object to pique his considerable interest and everything would come crashing down as he pulled it from the jumble. She nudged him back towards the workshop and the four of them set about making the final steps of the journey together.  
‘How have things been since we went?’ she asked. Preston furrowed his brow a little further than usual and looked pensive. She felt a brief spark of worry dart around her chest, but it soon dissipated.  
‘Nothing General,’ he said. ‘Nothing to report at all.’ There was a flatness to his voice. Was he disappointed?  
‘That aint true,’ said Sturges, ‘Mama Murphy got her hand stuck in that old Nuka Cola machine I been restoring. Marcy had to go an’ get some grease from Red Rocket as we were out.’  
“I… don’t think that’s that the General means, Sturges.” said Preston. Meg allowed herself to laugh.  
‘Preston, are you bored?’ she asked. They were rounding the corner on to the main street of the town. The only street, Meg supposed, although there was a lot more now than there was in her day. Her day: she needed to stop thinking like that. This wasn’t just her day; she felt a keen sense of propriety over Sanctuary which meant that this was also her place.  
‘I’m worried, General. Well, sort of.’ He sighed. ‘I’m not used to things being easy.’  
‘None of us are, Preston,’ said MacCready, measuredly.  
‘Some of us like it though,’ said Sturges.  
‘And we are going to have a party,’ said Meg.  
Preston was left standing, open-mouthed, outside the workshop as they trooped in, one by one, dropping their baggage into small spaces where they could. 

**********************************  
‘I think it should be a wassail,’ she called up, shading her eyes from the sun. ‘I have no idea what a wassail is, but it involves a bowl and some very strong mead.’  
MacCready was up a tall ladder, affixing Covenant’s fairy lights to the huge tree which marked the Eastern portion of Sanctuary. Meg was at the bottom, supposedly holding the ladders but mostly arranging the finer points of her party out loud at the ensnared merc. He was not enjoying his tenure as chief lighting technician and she knew that he hated the way he always ended up scrambling over roofs and up trees just because he was a sniper.  
‘Can it wait?’ he huffed, ‘I’m up a tree. You may have noticed.’ Meg just laughed and perched one foot on the third rung of the ladder. She was tall and strong, made lean from the necessities of the Commonwealth, and she knew she could catch a little mercenary, should he fall.  
‘And besides,’ he shouted, ‘what the fu-reaking heck is mead?’  
Up a tree, hundreds of miles from his boy and still adhering to his no-swear policy.  
‘Mead is made from honey!’ she hollered. And then, for added effect: ‘It’s fucking amazing!’  
‘It’s also fucking extinct,’ he said, beginning to climb down.  
‘You swore,’ she shot back. He reached the ground and smiled at her. They were close. Very close. He was dusting his hands together. She realised that she was looking at him intently and that she liked it when he swore. It made their relationship seem more… equal.  
‘You’re worth it,’ he grinned. ‘…Fuckface.’  
‘What would Duncan say?’ she chided, and he laughed in return. At one time, he would have retreated after any mention of his son and sat alone, running his hands around the brim of his hat, trying to breathe less heavily in the hope that his emotions were not given away. The fact that his son was safe, and on his way to him, had made him altogether more buoyant in recent weeks. She noticed his genial response and leapt on it. ‘He’ll be here soon, Mac.’ She wanted, however, to add a question to that statement. A question that had been at the forefront of her mind ever since Daisy had confirmed the transport from The Capitol. But she couldn’t: it wouldn’t be fair. When Duncan arrived it was up to MacCready to decide what to do with his friend, the vault dweller. 

************************************

As they made their way back to their rooms, he slung a clammy arm over Meg’s shoulder, albeit with some difficulty due to the four inch gap that separated them. A comfortable discussion about mead, about Jun’s suggestion of a barbecue, about the Mayor of Goodneighbour rooming in their house ensued. Meg scuffed the dirt with her feet as she walked, enjoying the closeness. There was a ferocious sense of ownership in her when it came to MacCready and she enjoyed the way people saw them as a team. She especially appreciated the way that MacCready had taken Shaun under his wing as soon as they had left the Institute. The boy was synthetic, detached from his mother through time and programming, but he was hers to protect and Mac was certainly part of that equation. She had told herself that Duncan’s arrival was not going to affect this arrangement, but she suspected, deep down, that it would. A real life boy was about to explode into their lives; craving his father’s attention. If asked, she would perhaps confess to being concerned about Shaun being pushed aside. If drugged, she would be forced to admit that she also worried about her own role in the new order.  
The sun was still hot on their faces despite the fact that it was plunging slowly down into the forests to the west. They shortly reached the house they shared and stood looking into its ruined face, still amicably arm in arm. It was her house, pre-war, but at the same time, it wasn’t.  
‘I want to board the other rooms before we head out again. I’m thinking that winter might not be kind this year.’ She said.  
They had only just met when the snows had drifted in from the North last December. Meg could not remember seeing anything like it pre-war and supposed that it must be a bonus feature of the wide-spread nuclear ruination. Those days had been hard, on their travels and on their pockets as they relented time and time again and rented rooms. They had vaguely discussed staying in Sanctuary and not moving this coming winter, although it all seemed like something too far away to fully comprehend. She broke contact with him and stepped on to the path, pointing at the skeletal roof.  
‘I reckon we could build up, you know. Make it a proper house with… I don’t know, a terrace or something? We got those planters from Greygarden and I want to see if we can maximise our growing. Oh!’ She stopped suddenly, struck by a new thought, ‘What about a little loft for Shaun? He could tinker up there and …stuff.’ Her train of thought was halted abruptly when she remembered that there was still no certainty of this house being any of MacCready’s concern in the foreseeable future. He was stood, perfectly still, with his hands now in his pockets. And he looked so serious. Her stomach turned to lead and she shrugged. ‘Or whatever. It’s up to you.’ Her voice broke on the last word - she unexpectedly felt unable to continue in his presence and found herself scurrying through the door and into her room. He called after her, obviously startled by her sudden change of mood, but she ignored him and cursed the fact that her eyes were beginning to sting. Her first instinct was to flop onto the bed and close her mind to the question which once again threatened to escape her, but her pride overruled this and she instead busied herself with the pile of clean clothes that she had left neatly folded on the bed earlier that day.  
‘Hey.’ His voice was gentle as he stood leaning against her doorframe. ‘What’s with the face?’  
She pursed her lips and continued to transfer her clothes into an open drawer. Without wanting to, she sighed heavily. The atmosphere quickly became intolerable and she finally looked him in the eye. He seemed genuinely concerned: his brow was tight and his eyes fixed her with a powder blue stare. She wanted him to speak first but he didn’t. He just watched her. The stinging of her eyes became something more and she cursed her own idiocy. She couldn’t even blame him for not recognising what was happening between them: even she could barely categorise it. She sank onto the bed, defeated. It was time.  
‘I’m… worried,’ was all she could manage whilst staring at her knees. She felt like a child, trying to articulate something bad or wrong. She used to be a lawyer and now she couldn’t manage her own emotions. She wondered where the Meg who had killed seven people just last week had gone, as though the instant she took off her armour she became a weak, diminished thing. Perhaps, she thought, the comfort of Sanctuary simply allowed her to dwell on those thoughts that she could otherwise bury under ammo and caps in the wastes.  
MacCready sat on the bed next to her and softly nudged her with a shoulder. He was still sweaty, even in a light shirt, but she didn’t mind. It was oddly satisfying against her bare arm and he smelled like home.  
‘You know, people think that I’m just a dumb killer,’ he began, speaking in a hushed tone that seemed overtly sincere in comparison to his usual, cynical tenor, ‘but I do have a brain. Kind of. When I was mayor – yes, I know, it’s ridiculous – I had to look after all kinds of kids, with all kinds of problems. You learn a little bit about people, doing that. I hated it at the time, of course, but then I was out in the big world and solving other people’s problems became something I looked back on with a kind of fondness. If you got the resources to help others, it means you got the basics sorted for yourself – you understand?’ Meg nodded and rested her head against the top of his. He took her hand in his (rough, calloused but delicate, with long fingers) and continued. ‘Out there in the world, everything was so much harder. I could only think about myself… and then, later on, Lucy and Duncan. I had to be selfish: for me and for us.’ He paused to wipe his nose on his sleeve. Allergies, thought Meg, generously.  
‘Anyway, after all that time, I guess I had got used to living to survive. It wasn’t even as if there was a difference before Lucy died - it was always just keep on moving, find food, get caps, survive, endure and who gives a shit about anyone else?’  
’But that’s where you came in, and thank god you did. There’s only so long you can exist inside that kind of selfish bubble before you eventually turn on yourself. You know that I was stuck in that back room, drinking myself blind, when you turned up. Seriously: how long would I have lasted? I didn’t even have the balls to get into Med-Tek and I sure as hell wasn’t helping Duncan any by sitting there waiting for Winlock and Barnes to peel me alive.’  
’I… needed someone, and you were there. And even if you were wearing just about the most impractical piece of shit armour combo I’ve ever seen… I knew you were going to be something at least interesting.’ He moved his arm around her shoulders. She continued to look at the floor, wondering what was coming next.’  
‘You’re not the one that everyone thinks is stupid, Meg. I am. So you’ll have to forgive me if I can’t understand why in hell you seem to be worrying about me ditching you.’  
She started to protest but he simply overrode her. ‘You and me is the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time – no, ever. I’ve never had someone by my side that can not only look after themselves, but look after me too. And now there’s Shaun, and Duncan and, god damn, we’ve got a family, Meg. Me and you!’  
They bundled themselves together now, and Meg began to sob into his shoulder.  
‘I’m sorry,’ was all she could say. Over and over again.  
‘We’ve got a house,’ he went on, ‘we’ve got a dog, for chrissakes. We have friends, and a town and a robot butler who calls me “Sir”!’ Meg hiccoughed a laugh and he moved so that he could grab the tops of her arms. She still could not fully look at him so he rested his forehead against hers and dropped his voice to the gentlest whisper she had ever heard.  
‘I don’t think of us as friends or even partners, any more. I love you, Meg. And if you can’t see that, then I guess I really am the dummy: for holding back for so long.’  
He planted a sweet kiss on her forehead and held her for a moment longer. Then, he wordlessly got up, left the room and closed the door. Meg was paralysed. In the space of a few minutes, her questions had not only been answered, but smashed open to reveal something, a kernel, that was anything but the simple matter of attraction she had been expecting. She was, she thought, the stupidest 200 year-old that had ever lived.  
And with that thought, she bolted after him.


End file.
